As part of initiatives related to Earth Day, the Biden administration set “a bold, new national goal to protect, restore, and reconnect 8 million acres of wetlands and 100,000 miles of our nation’s rivers and streams” on Tuesday. The initiative could be the overdue response to the Supreme Court decision in 2023 that limited federal protection of wetlands but only seven states are currently taking part, said an attorney active in water law.
The “America the Beautiful Freshwater Challenge” calls on states and local governments to advance their own policies and strategies to conserve and restore freshwater systems, said the White House Council on Environmental Quality. More than 100 entities, from cities and environmental groups to tribes, were inaugural members of the initiative. “Since 1970, populations of freshwater species have declined at the alarming rate of 83 percent and one-third of our planet’s wetlands have been lost,” said the World Wildlife Fund.
Some 5 percent, or 110 million acres, of the contiguous 48 states are wetlands, about half of the precolonial total, said the EPA. “Since then, extensive losses have occurred, and over half of our original wetlands in the lower 48 have been drained and converted to other uses,” according to the agency.
The Supreme Court ruled last May that federal protection of wetlands was limited to marshy areas “with a continuous surface connection” to steams, oceans, rivers, or lakes, a much stricter standard than the “significant nexus” test that it created in 2006. The case was brought by Micheal and Chantell Sackett, who said they were blocked by wetlands rules from building a home near Priest Lake in the Idaho panhandle.
Attorney Gage Zobell said the administration initiative “appears to be the long overdue response to the Supreme Court decision in Sackett which limited federal reach by limiting what qualified as a ‘water of the United States.'” The outlook for success could be limited with only one in six states enlisted, he said. “It is unclear if this is a serious proposal or merely giving lip service to wetland protection.”
The text of the American the Beautiful Freshwater Challenge was available here.